One Night Stand

Margaret Bedell

Mariana had gone a year and four months into living in NYC, and three months into her second lease without a nightstand. She had, at this point, accumulated all the bedroom essentials (bed, dresser, rug) and even what some people from her rural, Southern Ohio hometown would consider the non-essentials (desk, chair, bookshelf). She had no desire for a nightstand. She had ample surface space between her desk and dresser and was well aware of her tendency to repurpose objects' use into that which they were never intended. Her chair was often draped with jackets or stacked with unopened mail.

And so when she saw the nightstand abandoned, along with a massive bookshelf, a wheelie suitcase that was missing a wheel, and a wicker basket with a fist-sized hole in it, on the 3rd floor landing of her building she was not initially drawn to it. In fact, by the 3rd day she greeted the scene with a disapproving shake of her head thinking 'clearly no one wants the stuff, they really oughta take it out already'. She sensed it was her neighbors in 3B. They had a tendency to practice their 'music' past 10pm and seemed like the sort of people to leave their crap like an offering to the apartment gods, in public domain, under the wrongful assumption that anyone was looking to clutter their already small apartment with their castaways.

By the 7th day, however, she began to view the nightstand differently, her opinion softening with repeated exposure. 'It's kinda cool, isn't it?' she thought of its 70s style false wood exterior. By the 8th day she lugged it into her apartment and by the 9th day all the other items were gone, as if the absence of one was the signal the previous owner was looking for to haul off the rest.

A month and a half after she had arranged the nightstand with her favorite books and half a dozen candles of different sizes, she was on her way to a date with a guy named Tom who had swiped the same way she had on a dating app. He looked cute but seemed like the kinda guy who would be cuter in person. They were grabbing beers at a dive bar 15 minutes from her apartment. She was running late and was sweaty from work. She applied Chapstick feverishly on the train as if a slight glisten of the lips would help her cause.

It turned out Tom had his life less together than hers, which oddly enough, was a turn on. She was relieved of the pressure she often felt on dates to explain why she had studied Graphic Design but ended up in luxury sales but was actually dabbling in acting...well, no she didn't have a manager…she really only had taken an acting class two months ago. But she really enjoyed it and felt like maybe it was her calling? Or something like that..do you want another drink? She often felt like a 24 year old loser.

Tom was funny and unassuming. Two beers in and they were making fun of two drunk girls dancing in the corner to Bowie. Three beers in and they were kissing across the booth. Five beers in and they were on their way to Mariana's apartment.

She led him to her room and excused herself to the bathroom where she peed and gargled mouthwash to combat her beer breath. When she returned he was lounging on her bed, shoes off, looking around her room, at her nightstand in particular.

He looked over at the empty vial of coke, white residue dusting the bottom. "That's from New Year's Eve" she assured him, becoming instinctively defensive, needing to establish her drug use as celebratory rather than habitual. He nodded and continued to scan her nightstand without a word. She looked on uncomfortably, silently thanking God that she had disposed of the toenail clippings that had, up until recently, taken up residency in the corner. She had absentmindedly arranged them in order of ascending size as she clipped them, sitting on the edge of her bed, her foot resting on the nightstand, while on the phone with her mother.

She walked over and lay next to him, hoping to distract him with her womanly presence. He seemed unfazed. She felt fully sober.

Her neck prickled with embarrassment as she viewed her nightstand with unadulterated eyes, taking in what he must be seeing. There were two Chinese fortunes. They were from the same occasion, where she had ordered (and finished) such an enormous amount of food that the restaurant had mistakenly assumed it was dinner-for-two and had included, in addition to the two fortune cookies, two forks, 12 napkins and an ungodly amount of soy sauce. One lay open and face-up, the crease down its spine the only physical scar from its days as a POW in a cookie cage. The other was crumpled; clearly the less favorable of the fortunes.

He kept examining and she examined his examining, searching for a facial expression to clue her into his level of disgust. She thought she saw a flicker of emotion, the narrowing of eyes, the slight flair of nostrils as he viewed the dried tea bag, which sat on a deli napkin, a casualty of her 3 week long sinus cold that had finally run its course. Its string and tag hung off the nightstand and fluttered like a silent windchime every time she sat down on her bed with too much 'oomph'. It looked like a carcass decaying in the hot sun.

He looked at her. She was now completely exposed as the coke usin', horizontal eatin', teabaggin' scoundrel that she was. She blinked a couple times, nervous under his newly informed gaze. He leaned in for a kiss. She greeted it with stiff lips. This was surely going to be a one night stand.

Margaret Bedell studied Fashion Design at Kent State University and lives in Bushwick.